#bonus points too for multiple on a single show
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Something about Dick kissing Jason for the first time, Jason's childhood crush just kissed him and his brain stop working
Convenience is the only reason why Jason stays over at Dick's apartment sometimes. It has nothing to do with how comfortable Jason finds it - homey and lived in with all of its clutter: knickknacks from travels, framed photos of friends, and hardy plants that can withstand Dick's hectic schedule and sporadically remembered watering.
There are quilts. Pillows. Added comforts for the sake of comfort and beyond necessity. It feels like a hodgepodge of decor - an atmosphere that reads of a lifetime in the circus and another in the manor; humble and extravagant and surprising no matter how often Jason has seen it at this point.
Back when Jason had first barreled through Dick's window, he thought he had the wrong place. It felt too nice for any bat-raised brat, though maybe Jason is the outlier (a compact studio that's all function over form; no valuables, no warmth; hard to trace and easily disposed of - hardly a home, but 'home' was always something foreign to him anyway). Drapes billowed around Jason from the breeze of the open window behind him and Dick stood in his kitchen, leaned against a counter while watching Jason curiously because Jason is positive he looked as lost as he felt.
He remembers the rug under his boot. Stepping back onto hardwood so he wouldn't dirty it. It's weird to him how that same rug is beneath his bare feet now, toes curling into plush softness before he brings them up onto the couch to sit cross legged. Stranger still is how some weeks ago when Jason fumbled through a demand turned request turned question: help me with a case? Dick smiled and invited him into his space and hasn't made Jason leave since: Yeah. Of course, little wing.
Not that Jason hasn't left. He only stays on an as-needed basis. For the case. Because Jason's continued presence here has nothing to do with Dick's cozy apartment or the comfortable couch Jason dozes off on multiple days of the week now. It also has nothing to do with a persistent and undying crush that has followed Jason through lifetimes.
This arrangement is strictly case-related. It's more convenient to stay. Their schedules - Dick's schedule, in particular - are hard to work around. To maximize their productivity, it makes sense that Jason be here. That aside, it's his case. Begrudging as he was to let Dick in on it, Dick has skill sets that have been invaluable towards finding a resolution (ie. Dick is a shamelessly cunning and manipulative bastard - he puts on a show well; he wears dangerous and dark well, a second skin); he's capable and lessens Jason's burden, speeding everything along by helping Jason be in multiple places at once.
It's a good partnership.
They're still in the thick of it; will be for a while, by Jason's estimate. A commitment Dick has been comfortable making because cases are less pressure than a relationship - leave him alone, damn.
Maybe it's the new single life Dick is back to that has him receptive to Jason's continued company. If whatever girlfriend was around, Jason wonders if Dick would ask him to leave - if he would leave, himself. An added bonus that Dick's company has been, at least Jason would have the apartment still.
Not that Jason is here for the apartment. Or Dick. It's a strategic base of operations, is all.
It's neither here nor there why Dick is agreeable to Jason crowding his space and cramping his style. They work, they eat, they sleep if time permits and then they do it all again. Working around Dick's day job is a pain if only because it's police work, but what's worse is that immediately after the day job comes the night job, followed by the added workload of Jason's tasks and after living staying with Dick sometimes for days at a time, well.
It stresses Jason the fuck out. He doesn't understand when Dick rests; he doesn't get how the hell Dick hasn't run himself into the ground already. Dangers of all the work Dick does aside, the pace isn't sustainable. Forget joining the ranks of the dirty thirties, Dick will find his way to an early death if he doesn't slow down. Jason has been there, done that; he can’t recommend it.
"Take the day off." Jason calls from the living room. He sits on Dick's couch, pouring over all the information and materials Dick gathered a few hours prior while Dick goes about getting ready for another day at the precinct.
He thinks he might hear a tired grunt, followed by a yawn and the sound of Dick bumping into a wall.
"Your work schedules are unreasonable." Jason complains. It's not the first time that he's done so. Unfortunately Dick is as stubborn as the rest of them - more so, arguably. And yeah, Jason can help out by cooking sometimes and having coffee ready to go, but domestic-adjacent help isn't a long term fix even if Jason did get to be domestic long term.
Dick needs to find some work-life balance.
"It's fine." Dick says, brushing off Jason's concern in a way that leaves Jason bristling. "I'll wake up in a bit."
Hardly convincing when Dick yawns for the umpteenth time in a matter of minutes.
"You'll pass out on patrol one of these days." Jason scoffs. "Just because I can carry your dead weight doesn't mean I want to."
Dick snorts from the other room. "GCPD is too high-risk to leave unchecked."
That Jason can't disagree pisses him off. Even still, he taps irritably at the laptop and glares at the screen as he grumbles, "You're overworking yourself. That's all I'm saying."
Grouchy as Jason tries to sound, Dick sees right through it to the earnestness beneath. When he walks out of his room dressed in his blues, he even looks refreshed - endeared. Oh, no.
"You're sweet, little wing."
Fuck. Jason ducks his head, lips pursed and cheeks warm. Dick shuffles about his apartment for a few minutes, drinking the coffee Jason set out before straying back to his room. Lest Jason give himself away more, he can't say anything further. He stays petulantly quiet, refocusing his attention on something that might be more productive than arguing with the wall that is Dick Grayson.
"I'll be back in the evening." Dick tells him. "We'll work more then?"
Jason grunts, sulking as he stares fixedly on the screen and the details of their case. For as strained as Dick is, the research that he's gathered for his side of things is good. Well, not good. It's terrible news, but it's insightful and damning and they can use it to their advantage.
"You might consider taking a break, too." Dick says. It does little more than earn him a withering glare, a weak snarl because the hypocrisy is truly staggering. Dick knows it, too. He snickers, hands raised in a show of placation as he relents, "Alright, alright."
"See you in a few," Dick says, checking the time on his phone before distractedly striding over to where Jason sits on the couch. If only because it's uncharacteristic and not how this routine usually goes, Jason furrows his brows, tilting his head to look at Dick and promptly going still because Dick leans down, brushing Jason's fringe back to kiss Jason's forehead before ducking out to get to work with nothing more than a 'thanks for the coffee!' tossed over his shoulder.
Jason stares after him - at the closed front door - eyes wide and thoughts so overwhelmed that his mind is blank.
What just happened?
Jason raises his hand to hold against his forehead. A blush stains his cheeks a pretty pink, then a flustered red from the tips of his ears to down his chest.
Another moment passes. Jason breaks over himself, closing the laptop and setting his work aside because fuck, that just happened. It's something easily explained away: Dick is exhausted and not thinking straight, or he got caught up in the domesticity of it all and fell back into what might have been a habit from the past. There's nothing to it, but even still Jason's heart hammers in his chest. Stuttering and skipping in time with all the butterflies in his stomach.
Stupid crushes.
The door opens again and Jason jolts to sit upright, still flushed and looking like a deer in the headlights. Dick stares after him, equally wide eyed - cheeks flushed in a way that Jason has never seen because Dick has done the impossible and managed to fluster himself.
There's no denying they're both wide awake now.
And Jason - he can play this any number of ways. A happy accident that he can shrug off to play it cool, a mistake that Jason can hold over Dick's head and torment him for, or it can be a chance. An opportunity no matter how long of a shot it is. Just the thought of it has Jason's heart skipping a beat, his breath caught in his chest; he had planned to take his undying crush with him to the grave (again), but what if...
Flirting is all plausible deniability until its not anyway, right?
"This is why you should stay home."
To kiss Jason again. To kiss Jason right.
Dick's lips quirk into something boyish and charming before he laughs, a quiet chuckle. He leans against the door frame, looking over Jason's expression, "Might kiss you again."
And - nope. It was a valiant effort but Jason is playing out of his league. Get him out. S.O.S. Abort.
Plausible deniability goes both ways and he thinks Dick might have done it better, the fucker. For the life of him Jason can't tell if Dick was making a self-deprecating joke or flirting back. It’s a critical hit either way just for the implication and Jason's heart can't handle it.
Something about Jason's expression must give him away because Dick huffs a laugh, a soft and endeared breath followed by a smile so devastating that Jason feels disarmed.
"Might let you if you do something to deserve it." Jason quips, cheeks flushed, all challenge when he says, "Like rest."
He doesn't expect Dick to call off of work, but his heart might stop when Dick does.
======
And then they sit together and work on their case until Dick passes out, head pillowed on Jason's shoulder and Jason is the blushiest of boys.
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Mercs vs one of those fake mechanical rodeo bulls
Scout
Confidence 100%. Execution… 0%. Scout goes in thinking he is about to beat every record ever set at the venue, he already has his rodeo bull trophy acceptance speech fully planned out in his head. But the second it starts to move he is tossed head-over-ass into the air like the worlds gangliest Frisbee. The only thing he broke was his ego and the record for how far anyone has ever been thrown. 2/10
Soldier
He is roaring out war cries before the machine even starts bucking, but he holds on for a pretty decent amount of time once it gets going. He treats it more like a wrestling match, and when he starts sliding off the side he tries to put the fake bull in a chokehold. Perceives the bucking as it fighting back and starts throwing punches. He has to be dragged away. 4/10
Pyro
They just want to pet it! If they did try to ride it they would be perfectly capable of staying on, but they see no reason to make it upset. 🐮/10
Heavy
He is very reluctant to give it a go, thinking he’s simply too big for the machine. If someone does manage to convince him to get on, it’s like watching a grown ass man trying to ride one of those spring-horse things at the playground. Staying on isn’t even a challenge for him. 9/10 (-1 for lacking enthusiasm)
Demo
If he is only slightly wasted, there isn’t a doubt in my mind that Demo is just that guy who straight up stands on the mechanical bull ans rides it like a god damn surfboard.
If he’s too wasted however, Demo will be clutching at the bull with all four limbs, clinging on for dear life and wailing until he slides off pathetically. 11/10 - 1/10 depending.
Engie
Oh. Oh this is his time to shine. Engie is making this his MOMENT. He’s got yee-haws and wah-hoos for days, riding like he’s straight out of a western film and headin for the sunset. Out of everyone who attempts it, he’s the only person who actually does it correctly. Them hips be rollin baby, and Engie is mesmerizing and living his best life. Doesn’t even spill his beer. 100/10
Medic
This man is… shockingly bad. He can’t stay on for the life of him, either spinning off in a twirl of limbs or flopping headfirst over the front. He does think it’s great fun though, and attempts it multiple times much to the enjoyment of the crowd who get to watch him eat shit every single time. 4/10 (bonus points for being a good sport)
Sniper
Sniper isn’t ridiculously bad, but he isn’t exactly great at it either. He can hold his own for a while, but it certainly isn’t pretty. This man has about as much grace as a bale of hay. It’s like watching an inflatable tube man in a hurricane, he just flails around until it finally throws him off. At least he put some real effort in. 5/10
Spy
An absolute disgrace, and the best show of the night. Someone would have to literally blackmail this man in order for him to actually do it, but by god it’s worth it. It’s like the bull is actively tying to beat him up. He’s light enough that it tosses him up in the air but his cat-reflexes and death grip means that it can’t quiet get rid of him. He ends up just getting tossed around like a cartoon character, somehow always landing on it just to get thrown again. Perfect combination of desperately wanting to get off but far too scared to let go. 3/10 skill, 10/10 performance
Miss Pauling
She’s way more focused on having a good time than staying on for as long as possible or beating anybody else. Still, she probably sets it to the highest setting just for the fun of getting tossed around, and she manages to stay on for an impressively good run. She has a fucking blast, as she should. 8/10
#tf2#tf2 headcanons#tf2 demoman#tf2 sniper#tf2 medic#tf2 spy#tf2 engineer#tf2 soldier#tf2 scout#tf2 pyro#tf2 heavy#tf2 miss pauling
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Tell me all about LOST all I know is from Dane Cook
that is. such a funny sentence
aw shucks, its tempting, but i don't wanna give ya spoilers. and there are truly things in lost that must be experienced by your own flesh
...yes im aware of what my blog is like
so i guess i'll give a vague spoiler free overview
so. a group of plane crash survivors find themselves on a mysterious island and have to deal with the strange happenings + their weight of their individual traumas
the show is serialized and one ep more or less flows into another, so literally no ep can be skipped (no matter what anybody says) or else you'll miss something
its a large ensemble cast, ranging from the 13 to 20s range, all in all i think theres like 35 main characters
the show follows a flashback structure, each episode dedicated itself to a main plot on the island intercut with flashbacks to one character. we call these centric episodes. eg. this is a jack centric episode. sometimes an ep will have multiple characters have flashbacks in one ep. while this show didn't originate the concept of a large cast or flashback storytelling, it did popularize it in the early 2000s. so a lot of post 2004 shows wanted to be lost so bad and it shows
at first lost was a survival show but they gloss over this very quickly and its more about the weird shit going on. as time goes on, plots and mysteries stack up. this is to create intrigue, as the shows main focus is an endless parade of character studies. with the added bonus of some cool and twisty shit going on too
but because lost had so much plot, over time it got accused of being confusing and convoluted and Not Answering Questions and well. your mileage may vary. but i think its confusing if you watch it too slowly. like, it aired over a 6 year period, no wonder people got confused. its better to watch nowadays, way easier to handle
the genre of lost is: drama mystery action paranormal sci fi romance with a dash of comedy. lost is full of the saddest fucks you'll ever meet but the show contains enough levity and great colouring to make it not a huge misery fest
pretty decent racial diversity. next to no LGBT rep. more women than the average tv show. then and now
the score FUCKS
not a single bad actor in this entire show, the performances on display are fucking outstanding. and every emotion is like up to 11, which is great for my autistic brain
for those of you who find sex scenes to be tedious, i have a bit of trivia for ya: all sex in LOST happens off screen. not a single sex scene to be found. pre sex, yes, post sex, yes. making out, yes. but sex itself? footage not found. i'm neutral on the concept, i just thought that was something to point out
i highly recommend lost to, like, anybody. ever. its a masterpiece of television. even the low points are better than most shows. sometimes i take lost for granted and then i watch any other drama series and im like "oh right, lost is incredibly good"
its my third favourite show. and thats only cuz star trek and doctor who exist, and nobody is beating those fuckers
anyways do you like to see beautiful people cry and scream but it isn't cringe?* well, i've got a show for you!
*okay there is some cringe. as a treat. the leading man of this show has the social grace of a cold pancake (affectionate)
thank you for your time
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I'm super interested in the paranormal/cryptid post- where did you find the stuff about Japanese and US paranormal encounters? Finding a pattern in encounters like these is something I've always been curious about.
(repeating all the disclaimers from this post, which means that among other things, this isn't gonna give you many historical accounts, and it's very focused on the kind of people who wanna throw their accounts out onto the internet.)
The Japanese Side
The big one I might as well get out of the way up front: Kowabana. The site's got some stories, others exist in podcast form, but the books themselves are up to 12 volumes of translated stuff from 2chan's occult board, the vast majority of which is in the format of first-person accounts of supernatural encounters. If you know any Japanese internet horror stuff, this is where 3/4 of it came from--Hasshaku-sama, kunekune, Kisaragi Station, etc.
(If you aren't solely focused on the 'first-person account' thing, Tara Devlin's parallel Toshiden and Bankai series cover most of the rest.)
Other people have translated this stuff over the years, with wildly varying levels of quality. Saya in Underworld and Okaruto are some of the ones I've found useful in the past.
If you can read Japanese, there are quite a few sites that collect and curate this stuff, and then other sites that aggregate those sites. As an added bonus, a given story might exist in multiple different forms between these sites, and then half of the sites don't exist anymore because this stuff goes back twenty years. I've spent a decent amount of time browsing these, but couldn't give you a good list of solid ones. There is in fact a pretty decent starting list on Tara Devlin's old Tumblr.
There are some Japanese Youtube channels that document a lot of this stuff too, but tbh the only times I've watched them is when I'm about nine google searches deep looking for something, so I don't have a good list.
The American Side
I started making a list here, but it honestly wasn't much of a list. A lot of the English ones that I've encountered have come from some combination of 'wandering on the internet,' 'being on /x/ back when it was new,' and 'the story was included in some other piece of media.' (Like, Oh No Ross And Carrie is probably the single place where I've heard the most accounts of UFO stuff, but I'd be a weird person if I cited that as a good source for them.) Unlike the Japanese side of things, I've never had much reason to approach them in a systematic manner.
Considering that my big source for this on the Japanese side is 2chan's occult board, you'd think that 4chan's /x/ would go here, right? But nah. I mean, there are first person accounts on there, but they're nowhere near as prevalent. There are several places trying to archive /x/ stuff though, so it's out there for anyone who wants to dig through it like a trash gopher.
But, if you want your 'hundreds, if not thousands, of first-person supernatural accounts in one place' counterpart to Kowabana, the best resource on the English-speaking side that I know of is Monsters Among Us. Yeah, it's audio, but that's life. It also has really thorough show notes, which serves as a pretty good starting point for finding other resources. I'm pretty sure there's a whole ecosystem of this stuff on Youtube.
(Really though, if anybody knows of any big text repositories of English, first-person accounts of this stuff, curated to weed out the complete trash, I'd be interested in that myself.)
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Umm what are your meronia divorce headcanons? 😇 Yes I am baiting you into posting those tags you wrote because they were SO CORRECT
HGFDSJFSDFSD <3 <3 <3 GIVING ME AN EXCUSE TO TALK ABOUT THEM AS EXES... BLESS YOU...
Okay. So. BROADLY. Here is how I imagine they break up:
Mello, being literally so fucking bad at understanding Near and also being so bad at being normal in general and ALSO being bad at seeing his own value... I could see him suggesting breaking up as a way to test if Near really cares about him (this is deranged but so is he) and getting DEEPLY hurt when Near is not sobbing screaming crying on the floor pleading for him to stay. IMO Near is actually genuinely gutted in pretty much any situation where they part ways, but he sees that as his problem to deal with. He's not going to attempt to coerce Mello into staying in a relationship that he's (evidently) not happy in. There are. UM. Exceptions to this. But we won't get into that (<- lazy and also IDK if I can do it without spoiling a future story).
The biggest problem here is that even when Mello realizes he's miserable without Near etc etc etc he's wayyyy too proud to actually admit he made a mistake ending their relationship. I do think, however, that he would struggle to long-term stay away from Near fully. His impulse control is pretty bad so, like. Y'know.
I'll, uh. Refrain. From belaboring the point here [<- already plagued empress with the most disorganized thoughts imaginable yesterday about this ghsgjfsfhsdf] but I love the idea of a situation where they're exes because of Mello being chaotic and terrible and then he continues to be chaotic and terrible by starting to sleep with Near on a multiple-times-a-week basis again without actually acknowledging that they're effectively dating.
Like he's not fucking anyone else, he tells people he's not single, but he will NOT ask Near to get back together. He will however take literally one shot of tequila and just leave the bar or party & walk to Near's. "Ohhh I was just in the area" <- he had to walk 30 minutes to get there and climb up three stories of fire escape to do this. And he WOULD walk further if that was what was required.
Near is very nice and pretends like this is normal behavior because IMO he on some level realizes Mello is profoundly dysfunctional and is trying to figure out how he's supposed to deal with the whole thing (but is still in love enough and sufficiently used to Mello's deranged nature to put up with it <3 ).
Bonus points in my mind if this is a college AU or s/t and Near is roommates with Gevanni, who Mello fucking HATES on principle (read: is attractive and in Near's general vicinity, therefore must die). He has only met George (<- intentionally gets Gevanni's name wrong) a handful of times, but he was REALLY annoyed to find out that Gene didn't even know who he was bc CERTAINLY Near would have mentioned him. Gerald should really pay better attention :/ [Near is an undergrad student, Gevanni is a PhD candidate who desperately needed to sublet somewhere cheap and thought he lucked out w/ the most relaxed quiet tidy roommate Ever until this rude blonde guy started showing up and having loud sex with Near 2-3x a week]
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An Aeka Fictive's Guide to Watching "Tenchi Muyo!", part 1: the OVA continuity
Greetings, friends, mutuals, partners, metamours, and perfect strangers! Perhaps you are wondering what this anime franchise is in which I seem to be deeply invested? Well, worry not! I am here to rant at you about it.
Beginning in 1992, the Tenchi Muyo! franchise is one of the more sprawling and complex canons of anime. It was one of the first anime to make it big in the west among self-identified anime fans, while the market was stll struggling with popular appeal. It eventually aired on the Cartoon Network's Toonami block and became a nostalgic hit for viewers who were too removed from affordable rentals of the VHS cassettes and later DVD releases; a generation or two of fans now fondly remember the characters with adaptations for the American market like adding in a "Y" to the character Aeka's name under the assumption English speakers would read the "ae" as singular sound, instead of two distinct vowels.
From the OAVs (Original Animated Videos) that started it all, through the multiple TV shows, theatrical releases, spin-offs, video games, novels, and two distinct continuities of prose fiction, it can be a little overwhelming.
That, in a very literal sense, is why I am here. My name is Aidel Rayarvol-Spillbaum, and I am a fictive of Masaki Aeka Jurai. As someone whose identity is founded on the Tenchi Muyo! franchise (and a princess in particular) as a source, you can be assured that I have strong opinions that are rooted in being well-informed about the franchise's history and diverse incarnations.
The first thing you should know:
The majority of the Tenchi franchise as it stands at present is utter rubbish that I would only recommend as an example of "what not to do". The problem, you see, is rooted in that sprawling nature. Thus, here is your guide to what to watch and read, and what to avoid.
(For consistency's sake, all character and creators names will be given in the format of their country of origin; Family Name and then Given Name for the characters and Japanese crew, Given Name and then Family Name for the Canadian/American crew)
Tenchi Muyo: Ryo-Ohki
The series that started it all—unless you count a single-frame glimpse of a prototype design of Ryoko to be found in the midst of an episode of Ranma ½ Nettōhen.
Ah yes, that legendary Ranma fandom favorite, Ryoko from Tenchi Muyo!
But first, some wordplay: "Tenchi Muyo!" as a title is written 天地無用, more often seen on packaging as the Japanese equivalent of "This Side Up". It roughly means "Do Not Switch Top And Bottom", and is written with characters more often interprested as "Heaven and Earth" and "Useless", with the switch/reversal part being implied. It suggests the upheaval of the main character's lifestyle...while also giving us a secondary meaning: "Tenchi is Useless", or in the more canonized English translation No Need for Tenchi.
(via characterdesignreferences.com)
That, in four kanji, is the plot: a boy named Tenchi has his life flipped upside down and I'd like to take a minute just sit right there by the arrival of a seemingly ever-growing collection of beautiful alien women who squabble over him to the point that he might as well not even be present. It is what western anime fans think of as the standard of the "harem" genre: a seemingly unremarkable boy attracts improbable numbers of unusually attractive (and often just unusual) women who for some reason think he's the greatest thing to come out of Japan since miso paste.
Spoiling the plot beyond that is no more necessary than Tenchi himself, since the OAV series began as a mere six episodes, going from Ryoko Resurrected to We Need Tenchi, followed by the bonus The Night Before the Carnival. Featuring concepts by ThunderCats animator Hayashi Hiroki and the Okayama-born Kajishima Masaki , this first batch of canon had scripts written by Hasegawa Naoko and are highly recommended as an introduction to the franchise.
This is where things become immediately complicated.
Kajishima lent his given name to the series's protagonist Masaki Tenchi as a family name, and pushed for the action that didn't take in place to be set in a quiet rural part of the Okayama Prefecture. Kajishima claims that the ideas that came out of him working with Hayashi were based on concepts he'd been working on since he was a teenager...while Hayashi's account suggests that the conceps were more the result of his and Kajishima's original pitch having been a Bubblegum Crisis spin-off as a slice-of-life comedy.
What's evident is that Kajishima had some big ideas for the series that he wasn't clearly communicating to others; Hasegawa would later recount how often details of the vision he shared with her during her writing of the scripts for the first six episodes (and a later series of Tenchi Muyo! light novels she authored) were after-the-fact, shocking her with major character reveals that probably could have better informed characterization in those first few episodes.
The thing was, the fans wanted more. Tenchi Muyo! was a hit, and spun off into the aforementioned novels by Hasegawa. An author's note from the first novel (One Visitor After Another: Hexagram of Love) reveals just how complicated this became:
Well, y’see I’ve kinda just about finished my first novel. Are you absolutely sure...
(via Tenchi Muyo! FAQ)
Released starting in May of '93 when the fandom was still waiting for more, Hasegawa's light novel series offered development for which the fans were desperate, and established the first divergent reality, the "Hasegawa Canon" that was for a time considered by the Japanese fandom to be part of the official OAV continuity. The first novel introduced concepts like the connection between Tsunami and Washu...as well as a fan-favorite character that many western fans don't know got her start in this branch of the OAVs, Mihoshi's partner Makibi Kiyone.
(image via No Need to Review Tenchi)
The light novels have yet to get an official English translation of any sort, but for a time, these (and an assortment of audio-only CD dramas introducing new characters and plots) were enough for the Japanese fandom....
But only for a time. At the onset of 1994, a manga began to be released, with art and stories by a little-known mangaka, Okuda Hitoshi. Okuda's characteristic style (further developed in his original series Detatoko Princess) shines through in his interpretations of the character designs.
The writing and art has a much more "gag manga" feel to it, even when the story turns serious. Still, it was some of the earliest Tenchi content this system's previous host had available to her, and so I have a certain fondness for it and the new characters it introduced, like the nervous shipwright Asahi, and Ryoko's much more meek and kindly clone Minagi.
The official translation also dates back to when English language publishers would flip the art for an American audience. Check which version you've picked up: left to right, or right to left?
The different tone carries into jokes like the characters debating who would be who among the characters in a Mito Komon parody, pointing out sound effects as if they were physical objects, or referencing the relative density of the screentone used to render Mihoshi's comparatively darker skin.
The later run of the manga was able to take advantage of details communicated in the light novels (perhaps as well as Kajishima's self-published dōjinshi full of sketches and concepts), such as Aeka's hair being naturally a curly blue-green.
The manga assumes you watched the first six episodes of the OAV, and marks a second branching continuity from them...soon followed by a third:
The little-known Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki game for the PC Engine (and later remade with bonus material for the PC-FX) split off into its own short-lived continuity. The game borrowed Kiyone and introduced another Galaxy Police officer, the high-strung and intense Hakua, voiced by Suzuki Masami in a performance so identicaly to her portrayal of Amelia wil Tesla Saillune in the Slayers anime that you can effectively know everything you need to know about Hakua by thinking of her as "Amelia from Slayers, as a space cop".
Other characters made minor appearances in both the original and remake, including the little-known Earthling Makura from the drama CDs showing up here as a pizza delivery girl and martial artist...are we certain that Ranma 1/2 is not part of the Tenchi Muyo! franchise?
(Makura defends Aeka, via Legendaryanimefanjp1's playthrough)
But such a high degree of popularity meant that the OAV's creators could not leave well enough alone. Come the Fall of 1994, the next batch of six OAV episodes began, focused on a storyline about Ryoko being replaced by a duplicate...and then visits from the adults of the royal throuple family of Jurai.
The start of the second batch of episodes marks the departure of Hasegawa and Hayashi from the franchise; Hayashi expressed both a dissatisfaction with how the characters turned out compared to his vision, and a disinterest in getting involved in Tenchi as such a large-scale project. It is in these episodes and the following light novels more directly co-written by Kajishima that we start to see Kajishima's ideal for the franchise starting to take shape, with a deeply complicated family tree that unfortunately means every major cast member is somehow related to another.
For almost a decade, that was it for the OAV continuity. And, in my opinion...that's the limit of what you need to worry about.
2003 brought a third OAV series that introduced yet another member of the harem and Mihoshi's weird little brother, 2016 saw a fourth series that focused on Tenchi's father remarrying and the development of relationships and expectations placed on Tenchi and his multiple love interests, and ing 2020 a fifth series developed plot points from the spinoffs and Japan-only novels and firmly established that Tenchi would marry all of the girls. 2002 brought us Tenchi Muyo! GXP, a spin-off focused on a luckless childhood friend of Tenchi being effectively press-ganged into joining the Galaxy Police and given his own harem, while 2009 gave us War on Geminar, a spin-off focused on Tenchi's half-brother getting isekai'ed and becoming the protagonist of his own harem.
Are you noticing a pattern, there? Well, don't worry about it too much: it's all garbage. GXP is almost watchable, but Kajishima considered it a failure of his vision due to directorial interference, and wrote another series of light novels focused on making sure that protagonist Seina's harem got even bigger and more complicated—a plan eventually realized in last year's Paradise Starting OAV.
Don't recognize any of these characters? Well, you see, you'd need to have read the spinoff novels that were never translated into English...and be familiar with the prose-only untranslated alternate canon of another spinoff...and possibly a bit drunk because by that point I cannot imagine you wanting to be sober....
As I said, the OAV continuity beyond the second series is not recommended. The shift to digipaint weathered a lot of the charm of the visuals, while an excessive use of badly-inegrated CG for vehicles (including poor Ryo-Ohki) took that weathered charm and tossed it in the garbage. Both the original Japanese and the English dub are affected by the death or departure of the original voice actors for major characters.
In summary: the only parts of the OAV continuity that I can really recommend to an audience that is not fluent in Japanese are the first two series, and the Okuda manga.
Join us next time, when I tackle the multiple TV series continuities...or at least, the only one worth watching.
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the NO-SKIP albums: a tag game 🎶💖
rules: share the albums that you can listen to nonstop. those lightning in a bottle-albums that scratch ur brain just right. every single track, an absolute banger. u could not skip one if u tried. no notes. stunning, show-stopping, immaculate. ur no-skip albums.
🔎 bonus & optional (but imo, v fun) rules: 1) add a track rec for us to listen to! AND 2) share ur favorite line(s) from that track! 👀
This was so hard!! There are so so so many albums not included but I think 15 albums is enough to where I look crazy but not tooooo crazy (doubtful) and I wanted to make it somewhat varied genre-wise. A lot of these artists have like multiple no-skip albums as well so picking between them was extra difficult—on some I went with the underrated favourite of mine to mix it up. I don't know! It's kinda all over the place.
Thank you so much to @ventiswampwater, @visceravalentines, @avrilsboy, & @actualfucking for tagging me!!! 🥹 I think there were a few others who tagged me but then removed my tag, probably because they saw I was tagged by others lol, so thank you to those ppl too!!<333
Tagging: @xoxo-gossipghoul (& anyone else! I think most people have done this at this point? But if you’re reading this and haven’t been tagged yet then this is me tagging you!!! lol)
Album List & Track Rec:
🏴 Damaged — Black Flag (1981)
track rec: Police Story
↳ This fucking city / Is run by pigs / They take the rights away / From all the kids
🪑 Songs from The Big Chair — Tears for Fears (1985)
track rec: Mothers Talk
↳ It's not that you're not good enough / It's just that we can make you better / Given that you pay the price / We can keep you young and tender / Following the footsteps of a funeral pyre / You were paid not to listen now your house is on fire
💀 Collection I & II — Misfits (1986/1995)
track rec: Mommy, Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?
↳ Rip the veins from human necks until they're wet with life / Razor-blades love teenage flesh, an epidermoty / I'll bring back a souvenir, for it's my mommy's dream
🍊 No Doubt — No Doubt (1992)
track rec: Trapped in a Box
↳ Ah trapped in a box my life becomes void / And all of the thought for myself's now destroyed / Controlling my mind, what to eat, what to buy / Subliminal rules: how to live, how to die / Trapped in a box
🌙 Dreaming of You — Selena (1995)
track rec: God’s Child (Baila Conmigo) (Ft. David Byrne)
↳ God makes us dream / But won't set us free / Hey, hey, hey, hey / God calls us dance to songs we can't hear / Hey, hey, hey, hey
🌊 Tidal — Fiona Apple (1996)
track rec: Sullen Girl
↳ And there's too much going on / But it's calm under the waves in the blue of my oblivion / Under the waves in the blue of my oblivion
🦷 The Distillers — The Distillers (2000)
track rec: Red Carpet & Rebellion
↳ The palace dialed in the streets were burning / The red horizon came crashing through the morning / There was no contentment, only bloodshed / Red blood and social discontent / Bruised by puritan, oh, puritan exempt / It's like a peasant uprising
🦋 Greatest Hits — Mariah Carey (2001)
track rec: When You Believe (Mariah Carey & Whitney Houston)
↳ They don't always happen when you ask / And it's easy to give in to your fears / But when you're blinded by your pain / Can't see your way clear through the rain / A small but still, resilient voice / Says hope is very near
😈 Antics — Interpol (2004)
track rec: Not Even Jail
↳ I pretend like no one else to try control myself / I'm subtle like a lion's cage / Such a cautious display / Remember take hold of your time here / Give some meanings to the means / To your end / Not even jail
🌆 The City Sleeps in Flames — Scary Kids Scaring Kids (2005)
track rec: The World as We Know It
↳ A virus known as rage / Is brutal in destroying / And spreading all over the place / Bleeding culture / The dying nation / When the money controls the tide / We won't get another chance this time / We won't get a second chance this time
🎺 Back to Black — Amy Winehouse (2006)
track rec: Some Unholy War
↳ If my man was fightin' some unholy war / I would be behind him / Straight shook up beside him with strength / He didn't know, it's you I'm fightin' for / He can't lose with me in tow (With me in tow) / I refuse to let him go (To let him go) / At his side and drunk on pride / We wait for the blow
🎸 Favourite Worst Nightmare — Arctic Monkeys (2007)
track rec: Teddy Picker
↳ And it's the thousandth time that it's even bolder / Don't be surprised when you get bent over / They told you, but you were gaggin' for it
3️⃣ Three Vol. 1 — Joel Plaskett (2009)
track rec: Gone, Gone, Gone
↳ In the middle of a lonely night / Got caught in the hallway light / For a minute you were gettin' close / I suspect I've seen a ghost / In the middle of a highway dream / You got caught in the headlight beam / Down the road with your tired eyes / Good old boys with your old goodbyes
🫙 Ignore the Ignorant — The Cribs (2009)
track rec: Emasculate Me
↳ Spent all this time chasing happy / But happy is boring to me / So put walls around our misery / And gently emasculate me
🧱 Brutalism — IDLES (2018)
track rec: Exeter
↳ It seems like no-one cares / I think I'll take the stairs / 'Cause nothing ever / He punched himself in the face / To prove he wasn't gay / 'Cause nothing ever happens
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This week's theme is: rec a fanwork (fic, gifset, fanart, podfic - bonus points if you do multiple mediums) that made you feel warm and fuzzy inside (the 'feel good' fanwork). Tag @welcometololaland or #fic rec friday
Thank you for the tag, @ladytessa74
I love that this week is expanding into other kinds of works! This post is going to be very fucking link heavy as a result because I got a little excited😅 I'm also going to queue up a ton of these to reblog over this weekend (cause they're all too wonderful to only reblog once anyway).
911: Lone Star
Fanart
tarlos proposal (made pre-actual proposal) by @alwaysablossom
tarlos instagram au set by @revengeofthesiths
these stunning tarlos drawings by @reyeslonestar
grace ryder by @yorit1
brian michael smith/paul strickland by @mahanonu
softball TK by @dannylarryson
tarlos coffeeshop meet cute comic by @fitzherbertssmolder
Gifsets
the 126 in color by @ayan-sukkhapisit
firefighter paul strickland by @ayan-sukkhapisit
the 126 + tarot cards by @rafael-silva
the women of the 911ls by @rafael-silva
marjan rupi kaur set by @rafael-silva
paul set by @scullyblr
stunning tk/tarlos set by @ronenrubinstein
marjan 3x9/4x9 parallel set by tailoredshirt
paul strickland + trans flag colors by @genderqueerbuck
paul strickland + true colors by @floralbuckleys
Fics
With love, your soulmate by @chaotictarlos [soulmate AU]
Pure devotion by @mi1kc0ffee [kinky PWP themed: gag]
And We'll Only Be Making It Right & Now my heart is in your hands by @noxsoulmate [friends to lovers s1/2 AU]
Showing You my Love by @ramblingdisaster73 [soft, fluffy tarlos surprise date]
The Raven Cycle
Fanart
All Adam cared about was his autonomy by @eggpy
ronan lynch: good catholic boy by @polartss
the shopping cart scene by @rosiethorns88
Fics
while we're on the subject, could we change the subject now by @toast-the-unknowing [no supernatural, neighbors AU]
Steady All The Hands by sksai [no supernatural, single father!ronan & sex worker!adam AU]
Star Wars
Fanart
Lizzo & Grogu by @fionacreates
jedi!Finn by @furiousfinnstan
come as you are (anakin) by @02png
one of the most stunning things featuring that tattooine desert you'll ever see by @procoffeinating
Gifsets
leia set by @hayden-christensen
finn + maya angelou set by @momentofmemory
#fic rec friday#911 lone star fic recs#fic recs#the raven cycle fic recs#star wars#all the recs#beautiful fan art#there's so many talented people out here just blessing our eyeballs with free shit its so crazy and wonderful#so many links y'all#so sorry lmao#I have spent so long linking and tagging in here that I don't have the energy to tag anyone else to participate LOL#so if you've managed to make it far enough to be reading this consider yourself tagged :P#rec list
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A cautious case for Star Peace
Earlier in the season I expressed dismay at the telegraphing of what I would consider to be a bad, even irresponsible war story featuring the Gorn in Strange New Worlds.
It may surprise the reader that after the season finale, I remain at Yellow Alert, but I see signs that my worst case scenario is not what is going to unfold. Spoilers after the jump.
For starters I will acknowledge there are apparently troubling comments about the intention behind the Gorn from the showrunners. Some of these comments are being taken out of context, because they don't fully rule out the idea of an accommodation with the Gorn, but they do have to first play out their role as series antagonists.
Many bits have been spilled over the idea of a villain who is genetically predisposed towards being incapable of empathy and the implication that, not unlike the Xenomorphs that the showrunners are explicitly borrowing from, there is ultimately no solution but a final one. A grim argument that even in a setting prefigured for idealism and the rejection of xenophobia and violence as being preferred, there are some gulfs that can't be bridged. Some peoples whose needs are so profoundly in conflict that there can be no lasting peace.
I think this episode is actually subverting that in not even all that subtle ways that many a web-pundit are missing or dismissing.
To recap, here are some blink or you'll miss it Chekov's phasers that I think will be firing if not in the season premiere then later on in the series.
Juvenile Gorn who are forming packs and cooperating instead of fighting to the death. This was a moderately significant plot point from the last time we saw the Gorn that probably got overshadowed by the episode's tragic ending.
In spite of his tough talk to April, later in the episode after being reunited with Batel, Pike wearily expresses a hope that maybe there's something everyone missed, some way of achieving a breakthrough.
The Gorn juvenile not harming Batel could be read a couple of ways. Either its just a way to telegraph her infection, or its another curious behavior. I honestly do not remember if the Gorn from season one was ever in a position to confront Hemmer and then back down. It seems like if the juveniles are known to fight to the death, its not unreasonable to assume they would normally view a host carrying eggs as competition.
Batel's rescue positions her for Chapel and M'Benga to "science the Bantha poodoo" out of the Gorn egg problem and in the process, learn something critical about the Gorn that might lead to a more peaceful coexistence. Some sort of pheromone that makes Humans read as friends not food, or even the potential to raise Gorn young with a different socialization, proving that heredity isn't destiny.
The abduction of the crew from the planet also seems significant for reasons beyond needing to set up a cliffhanger. This too will provide an opportunity to add complexity and nuance to the Gorn. Perhaps we'll learn they're not actually a single hat species and there are dissidents, pacifists, those who seek to live sustainably and manage their reproduction in a way that doesn't rely on coercion or the violation of others' right to live?
At least some of the Gorn's behavior is apparently tied to solar activity. Although its still squicky from a Doylist standpoint, a Watsonian excuse that external factors flipped the switch on the Gorn and make them go berserk does open the door to analogies to circumstantial hysteria in humans.
Bonus: There have been multiple episodes this season around the theme of biology not being destiny: Una's court marshal for being a closeted Illyrian and La'an carrying the weight of the name Noonien Singh.
Additionally there have been a couple of episodes about the struggle to maintain peace with the Klingons and overcome the trauma and paranoia that follows war (and often incites new ones.) This doesn't feel like the show to leave "nuke the site from orbit, its the only way to be sure" as its only option for dealing with the Gorn in perpetuity.
So there you have it, I'm cautiously optimistic that we could see a shift from inscrutable killing machines to fully developed civilization in the span of a season or two. Emphasis on the cautiously. This franchise has set conditions under which attempted genocide, narrowly averted, is the only way to resolve the conflict on far too many occasions.
#star trek#star trek ethics#fandom commentary#first reactions#strange new worlds season 2#Strange New Worlds spoilers#SNW s2e10#scifi ethics#war stories#genocide is bad#gorn
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Omg can I get benni with a hopeless romantic reader? Bonus points if they find her yandere tendencies "cute"
what I would give to have a girl like benni in my life. sorry this took so long :)
—
Benni Winters — All Things Love
GN!Reader
Warnings: obsession, manipulation, benni being benni, slight age gap (five years), mentions of NSFW (no explicit detail), swearing
—
• You weren’t the luckiest in love.
• Lover after lover came and went, each leaving your heart a tiny bit more broken, but you vowed to never give up.
• You were the type to believe in soulmates, that everyone had a certain someone they were supposed to meet and stay with forever.
• But you just couldn’t seem to find them.
• So you went years of small, short relationships, trying so, so hard to find Mr or Miss Right, but alas, you were disappointed every time.
• Until you met Benni, of course.
• She was a new intern at the journalists that you worked at, specialising in photography for the newspapers as well as helping the tech department with their cameras.
• Since you were quite high up in the company, she was put under your care, a cute collage-fresh sweetheart who complimented your each and every move.
• It felt like love at first sight, but it felt a bit wrong at first. She was only 19, and you were nearly 25. You felt kind of… predatory. But, you couldn’t resist her charm, finding yourself in her arms within a month of meeting her.
• She was the most perfect partner: intelligent, handsome, possessive… you really felt like she was the one. You fell in love with her, maybe a bit too quickly. What would she think if she knew how fast you’d fallen?
• But you didn’t have a clue how reciprocated your feelings were.
• Fuck, Benni was obsessed with you.
• She’d been stalking you even before she’d met you, this talented journalist who wrote so many wonderful articles… she just had to meet you, and as if the gods had heard her plea, a single internship slot opened up.
• It would be a lie if she said she didn’t do some simple rumour spreading to get the other applicants rejected, hacking into their Twitter accounts to post the most outrageous opinions on controversial topics, just to ensure she would be chosen.
• But when she actually met you, it was game over for you. She followed you home every night, noting down what you had for dinner so she could learn to make it for when she gets you (whether that be by manipulation or kidnap, she didn’t mind). She also added a tracker to you car, just so she knows exactly where you drive to if you were to randomly disappear late at night.
• She’s putting the charm on thick, gently touching your arm, giving you small smirks that she knows drives you crazy.
• It doesn’t take long for you to be in her bed, sweaty as she presses open-mouth kisses over your delicious skin, exhausted and pleasured body sprawled out so magnificently. She’s got hearts in her eyes, heart beating so loud she’s sure you can hear it.
• You’re the one.
• She’s the one.
• You ignore all the red flags.
• So what if she happens to be in the same mall fifty miles away? She’s just returning a jacket that didn’t properly fit her.
• And the cameraman who lost his job for having drugs on site? No, silly, that’s a coincidence that happened, and that Benni took over his job.
• What about the multiple occasions you’ve found her in your house uninvited? She’s just making sure you’re alright, of course. Give her a key as well, just so she knows how much you love her.
• Her yandere tendencies become very apparent a few months after you start dating. She’s confident you’re so in love with her that you won’t care, and yup, she’s right.
• “Oh, that’s adorable,” you laugh as she shows you the piles of photos she’s taken of you while you’re not looking. “Ah, look! That’s when I was in… Cyprus? How…? Oh, you’re a strange but beautiful thing, love.”
• “Oh, baby, you scared me,” you grin as you notice her standing in the doorway of your bedroom, after waking up in the middle of the night. “Come on, come get warm with me.”
• “I love it when you get all protective,” you murmur, nuzzling your face into her neck. “The way that guy’s nose cracked when you punched him was hot.”
• It’s as if you’re wearing rose tinted glasses. You see no bad in Benni.
• Even if she straight up murdered someone, you’d be unable to see her as anything but an adorable sweetheart, one that was only trying to protect you, of course.
• Benni’s glad she managed to get you before someone more horrible did. You were susceptible to love, and if someone dangerous were to woo you… oh she can’t bare to think of the consequences.
• Just stay with her.
• It’s safer that way.
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Pathfinder's Spray of Failure: Monk
Regarding previous post on classes where I criticised Pathfinder in passing for failing to fix the Fighter, I got some comments and asks about Pathfinder attacking or defending it for other class things, so let's talk a bit about that.
I hold that Wizards dropped the ball with 4th Edition D&D, then Pathfinder bumbled into being the 3rd Edition successor for people who wanted officially supported 3e-like material and play, but Pathfinder added very little of value and Paizo (the company) was mostly lucky in picking up the metaphorical $100 bill on the sidewalk.
Paizo heard about bad design in 3e and 3.5e, but had no understanding of what to fix, and changed around a lot of dumb shit at random while claiming to fix things.
Paizo was spraying failed changes all over the place when making Pathfinder, undermining their own value proposition by making it harder to convert characters or switch play from 3rd Edition D&D. This did very little to fix 3e's problems, and added new problems.
My example today is going to be the Monk class. Links for those who want to read along: Monk in the 3.5e SRD, Monk in the PF SRD.
The Monk in 3.5 was generally agreed to be underpowered. There's four roles in the classic adventuring party - Fighter, Thief, Mage, Cleric - and the 3.5 Monk fills none of them. Nor does it carve out a new and fascinating niche with its own method of play.
The 3.5 Monk plays like half of a Fighter and one-quarter of a Thief. The Monk suffers from severe Multiple Ability Dependency (MAD) needing Str, Dex, Con, and Wis to do the fighter part, and Int to get the skills if it's going to be doing any thieving on the side. The Monk has poor accuracy, poor damage, poor toughness, and class features that try and fail to raise 'unarmed' to a viable combat style.
For example, Ki Strike (adamantine) at 16th level. Makes one's hands count as adamant when attacking barehanded, enabling the Monk to punch through the armor of monsters like the Stone Golem that shrug off damage from regular blows. Except the Stone Golem can show up at level 10-11 and the Sword Fighter can buy an adamantine sword as early as level 5. Ki Strike is too little, too late.
The Monk is still better with fists than anyone else with fists, but that's not saying much.
The Monk also suffers the general non-caster problems like "Cannot Fly" which force it to buy a Magic Item of Flying to remain relevant when flying enemies become common. At least it gets a teleport-like ability (Abundant Step) which helps a little.
So what did Paizo change about the Pathfinder Monk?
Well, first, if you look at the class skill lists near the top of both classes, there's some general system improvements like merging "Hide" and "Move Silently" into one single "Stealth" skill, but other than that, they removed Knowledge (Arcana) from the monk's skill list, and added Knowledge (History) instead.
As a class, this makes the Monk marginally worse in D&D - Arcana is the knowledge skill that covers dragons. For people switching editions, this makes their experience worse because it's breaking compatibility for no gain.
Flurry of Blows was given +1 to hit at first level, scaling to +3 to hit at 20th level, while the class Armor Bonus now goes up every four levels instead of every five levels, so that's 0 points higher half the time and 1 point higher half the time, swapping back and forth as you level. Flurry of Blows also had its underlying mechanics changed: 3.5 started at a -2 penalty that went away with advancement, Pathfinder made the -2 penalty permanent but added a different bonus scaling from +1 to +5, hence the net result of scaling from +1 to +3 to hit.
This still does not make the Monk competitive in play, only annoying to play if you're used to 3.5 and you have to learn these tiny tweaks!
The 3.5 Monk gets bonus feats at levels 1, 2 and 6. The PF Monk gets bonus feats at levels 1, 2, 6, 10, 14, and 18. This is an improvement, but it's still too little, too late, hardly worth the hassle of using a different list of feat choices.
Ki Strike (adamantine) is still at 16th level, boo. Ki Strike (silver) was added at 7th level to help the monk punch werewolves, yay. Ki Strike was also tied to a Ki Pool of resource points which become available at 4th level and can be spent to perform weaker knockoffs of a wizard's Haste spell (single target, shorter duration, partial effect).
At 5th level, the PF Monk gains the new ability to spend a point from the Ki Pool to add five feet to the height of a high jump. Remember the "Cannot Fly" problem I mentioned above? 5th level is where the Wizard gets the ability to FUCKING FLY by spending from a similarly limited pool of daily resources. If you're going to make the Monk spend limited resources from the Ki Pool for temporary mobility, GIVE HIM FLIGHT ALREADY, not this slightly-higher-jump.
Wholeness of Body, a monk's self-healing ability, was changed to cost points from the Ki Pool where it previously was free. It's been given a greater maximum healing in Pathfinder, if you spend all your daily Ki Pool points on it.
3.5 Monks can teleport themselves and handholding allies 600ft with Abundant Step. PF nerfed this to self-only teleport, and made it cost points from the Ki Pool.
The 3.5 Monk can become ethereal (ghostly) at 19th level with the Empty Body ability for free a short time each day, up to about two minutes. PF made it last longer, up to eight minutes, but also made it cost points from the Ki Pool to use on a per-minute basis.
The entire Ki Pool mechanic sucks.
Partly because it's a small resource being stretched across too many weak uses, creating bookkeeping hassle and yet more compatibility-breaking petty change for little gain.
Partly because this is now a class feature at 19th level, at this point At-Will Etherealness For Free Forever wouldn't be out of line, the spellcasters have been traveling to other planes of existence for 5-10 levels, the enlightened monk can surely shed the frailties of the flesh by now to casually battle enemies on the astral plane, and resume wearing that flesh like clothes at a later time. But no, pay per minute.
3.5 Monks become immune to mundane diseases at 5th level. PF improved this to become immune to all diseases at 5th level, including supernatural ones like ghoul fever or mummy rot. Also, Stunning Fist was given the option to do things other than Stun. Thanks for the small buffs. Monk still underpowered.
-
Finally, at 20th level, the capstone ability of the 3.5 Monk was to become an extraplanar creature who has achieved harmony with the cosmos and is made of enlightenmentanium, gaining a perfected body that shrugs off the first 10 points of damage from any nonmagical weapon.
This was almost entirely useless because everyone has magical weapons from 10th level and up.
Paizo messed around with this in unhelpful ways and instead gave the 20th level PF Monk a perfected body that shrugs off the first 10 points of damage from any nonchaotic weapon.
This is marginally more useful, because there are so few other uses for chaotic weapons and people won't be carrying them by default, but it's still weak, it's still simple to bypass, chaotic weapons are easily available at 20th level (you can make them as early as 7th) and the PF Monk as a whole is still underpowered and can't fill the Fighter role and can't fly and hasn't been fixed, despite all the tweaks.
Paizo's PFSRD also offers a different capstone option at 20th which I paste here:
Old Master
At 20th level, the monk has reached the highest levels of his martial arts school. The monk gains one additional attack at his highest base attack bonus when using flurry of blows, and his dodge bonus to AC increases by 2.
This 20th level class feature is almost as good as the Haste spell that wizards get access to at level five. Haste gives an additional attack unconditionally, a 1 dodge bonus to AC, a 1 bonus to hit, and faster movement speed.
D&D characters leave the realm of "real people" around level 5. yesyes, there's lots of you who want to complain that wizards are doing unreal magic at level 1, but 1st level wizard magic is things like "Shoot Flaming Arrow But It's Magic" and "Disguise But It's Magic". 1st level magic mostly replicates real capabilities.
Old Master would have been cool as a Monk ability around 5th level. That's when he reaches the highest levels of his martial arts school, by the standards of real-life martial arts schools. Instead, Paizo put it at 20th level, because Paizo like a lot of D&D designers make the recurring mistake of thinking 20 is the "highest" level in D&D so 20th level is where you put the highest human capability.
No - the highest human capability is around level 5. After that, D&D characters are superhuman, and their class features should be superpowers.
If I may make a silly suggestion, 20th level martial arts in fantasy land should be like that infamous time Superboy punched continuity, excusing DC Comics's retcons and alternate character interpretations as in-character events from bruised timelines.
The 20th level wizard gets utterly bullshit spells that impose worse-than-death fates like being put into suspended animation and then entombed several miles underground in a cavelet hidden from divination spells. Even Resurrection won't help you now!
The 20th level monk should get to punch continuity. If you're fighting a major badguy with a bad matchup, punch him in the childhood and now you're fighting a different badguy in the present. :-D
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This isn't for any specific fic but poly sick dynamics have me😍🥰💖✨💓💫
Especially when there's multiple caretaker/sickie dynamics
One super squeamish one caretaker, one super tolerant one and one that's kinda I the middle. Also Bonus if one or more of the caretakers also get sick because they just tried to be there for sickie.
Sure thing! I hope you enjoy!
It was a hot summer day in Haddonfield. Laurie, Annie and Lynda had spent most of the day in Laurie's sizeable backyard. Lynda had gotten her fair share of sunbathing in; she had full intentions of showing off to Bob later. Annie had been counting the grasshoppers, and she kept remarking about how, "There's so many of them this year!". And Laurie had been going back and forth between the covered back porch and getting some tanning in as well. It had been a peaceful day, but, even through the summer bliss, all 3 of the girls had mentioned not feeling well at some point or another.
At one point, Lynda had sprayed herself down with the water hose, because her stomach started to cramp up and she assumed she was getting too hot. The water helped for a while, but, then the uncomfortable, bubbly feeling came back.
Meanwhile, Annie had been having an odd, tingly, butterflies feeling in her belly. She described it to Laurie as "feels like I'm nervous, but I'm not". The brunette had eventually chalked it up to her nerves trying to calm down after finals last week, not being in school did take some getting used to, after all.
And Laurie, well, she'd been having waves of nausea all day. She'd feel fine for a while but then a wave of queasiness would stop her in her tracks, for a minute or two, then go away. Being the most logical of the 3 teenagers, with every sickness wave her mind would flash back to the nasty stomach virus that was going around school the week before summer started. But, surely she'd have caught it before now...right?
As the sun started to set, the girls were sitting on the back porch nibbling a couple apples; it was Annie's idea, she'd heard somewhere that apples can settle your stomach. She'd only eaten a couple pieces before she just had to stop, her stomach suddenly felt really iffy.
"U-um...Laurie?" Annie squeaked.
Laurie looked up. "Yeah?" The blond answered.
Annie's face was flushed, with both sun and the urge to cry. This worried Annie herself; she wasn't usually a weepy person, but she felt really upset right now.
"I-I don't feel good..." she said, her breath hitching.
Laurie's eyes widened with concern, and Lynda was giving Annie a nervous look. Laurie pushed the plastic lawn chair back from the table and went over to Annie, feeling her forehead. "What's the matter? Did you get too much sun?" She asked, and the curly-haired teen shrugged, a single tear trickling down her cheek.
Laurie pulled Annie into a comforting hug, which Annie eagerly returned. She needed the comfort, and Laurie was just about the most comforting person she knew.
Lynda was nervously playing with her luxurious blond hair, her own stomach starting to turn, more with anxiety than anything. Lynda hated when people threw up; ever since she was a toddler, vomiting terrified her, whether it was herself or someone else. She wondered how on earth Laurie was so calm, and so readily getting that close to Annie who, frankly, looked to be seconds away from barfing.
Annie nuzzled her face into Laurie's chest, now starting to cry openly, her arm wrapped around her midsection.
"It's ok Annie, it's alright...deep breaths, ok?" Laurie comforted the smaller girl, patting her back. Annie was shaking now, her face now a slight shade of green. Lynda was ready to bolt, but, she resisted the urge. She wanted to be a good friend and be there for Annie, so she stayed put, but the fear in her eyes must've been more obvious than she thought, because Laurie gave her a sympathetic smile.
"Lyn, if you wanna go inside, we get it. We know this kinda thing bothers you." Laurie said. Lynda took Laurie up on her offer without hesitation and jumped up out of her seat, but before bolting through the sliding glass door she stopped and said, "anything I can bring you?"
Annie shook her head, "No, thanks, Lyn. I'll be alright..."
Lynda nodded, and disappeared inside. With that, Laurie crouched down in front of Annie, as she sat in the chair, and cupped her cheek in her hand. "Are you ok, Anne Marie?"
Annie shook her head, sniffling.
"Do you have to throw up?"
Annie nodded. Laurie was about to help her inside to the bathroom, but Annie's stomach had other plans, so she made a break for the grass and threw up into the lawn. Laurie cringed with sympathy and patted her friend on the back, holding her dark curly hair back.
As Laurie comforted the sick Annie, she felt her stomach flip too. At first, she thought she was just getting squeamish, but...no, she wasn't that sensitive to this sort of thing. She's a babysitter for Pete's sake, kids puke all the time, she's used to it. So, why did she feel sick?
Laurie's hand left Annie's back and rested on her own stomach instead, and Annie turned around when she felt the patting stop. She was about to whine for her to keep doing it, until she saw the blond holding her own stomach.
"What's wrong?" Annie asked, her voice weak and raspy.
"I...I don't think I feel good either..." Laurie said, trying to swallow down the hot feeling rising in her throat. Annie, fairly sure she was done, stood up straight and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. She gave Laurie a worried look, as the blond seemed to go pale before her eyes.
Before she knew it the rolls were reversed; Laurie was puking into the grass and Annie was holding her hair.
"Oh jeez, I'm sorry, Laur...did I make you squeamish?"
Laurie shook her head, coughing wetly.
"N-no...I think I'm sick too..." she answered between heaves.
About the time Laurie regained control of her body, she heard Lynda crying for her inside. She and Annie both bolted to check on her, and they found her hunched over a trashcan, also being sick...
"Oh Lyn.." Laurie crooned, pulling the cheerleader's hair back into a ponytail and rubbing soothing circles into her back. She was being especially soft with Lynda because she knew she had emetophobia, and needed more reassurance than most people would. Lynda was sobbing as she turned around and buried her face in Laurie's shoulder. Laurie returned the embrace, not even phased by the fact that Lynda had thrown up on her a little, apparently having misjudged whether or not she was done.
"I guess it wasn't too late to catch that stomach bug..." Laurie stated aloud. Annie nodded in pained agreement, before gagging and heaving into the trashcan.
Naturally, squeamish Lynda had her "puke button" pushed by Annie's vomiting, so she promptly emptied her stomach a second time down Laurie's front. Laurie's only reaction was simply to pat Lynda on the back, and croon comfortingly to her while also giving Annie a back rub.
A couple hours later, the girls were piled up in the livingroom. Annie lounged on the couch, watching TV. She'd whine about her stomach hurting occasionally but, other than that, this was just an excuse to be lazy to her.
Poor Lynda, on the other hand, was in the fetal position on the floor, hugging a bucket and crying. It'd been years since she'd felt this scared and upset, and she was so scared of throwing up and not being able to get the bucket in time that she refused to lie on the couch, in fear of making a mess. Her whole body was trembling and she panicked with every cramp and wave of nausea, and she flat out refused to try eating or drinking anything.
Laurie was the polar opposite of Lynda. She was the picture of calmness, sitting on the floor next to Lynda, rubbing her back and stomach while casually sipping some Ginger Ale. She'd taken the liberty to call both Annie and Lynda's parents to let them know the girls would be staying with her, as they didn't really feel like traveling, and she didn't mind caring for them a bit. She'd been tending to them both between her own bouts of sickness, which she treated like an everyday occurrence. Comforting Lynda, holding a bucket for Annie so she could hold her stomach, which was cramping something awful, checking temperatures, disinfecting and cleaning when she felt like it...Laurie was the definition of "the mom friend".
All 3 of the girls were glad that Laurie's parents were out of town. They didn't mind being sick in front of Laurie but if her parents would've been there, it would've been downright embarrassing.
"Laurie, can you rub my stomach?" Annie whimpered, curling into herself. Laurie smiled a bit. "Of course, your majesty. " she joked, standing up off the floor after giving Lynda a pat on the shoulder. She made her way to Annie and sat down beside her, slipping her hand underneath Annie's tank top and massaging her stomach. She smiled when she felt the smaller girl relax, and Annie let out a contented, "mmm..."
Lynda managed a smile through her tears. "You're gonna be such a good mom someday, Laurie." She said. Laurie smiled. "Aww, thanks Lyn. You are too."
By the time midnight rolled around, Annie was sleeping like a baby, and Laurie had carried her upstairs to her own bed after she'd fallen asleep on the couch. But Lynda was still nauseated, and therefore afraid to sleep.
"Laurie, if I throw up while I'm asleep I'll choke..." she cried, her hands pressed against her stomach.
"I'll give you an extra pillow so you're not lying flat. How would that be?"
Lynda shook her head. "No..no I can't..."
Laurie sighed. "Well, little miss Lynda, would it help if I hold you? I'll stay awake and make absolutely sure you don't choke." Laurie promised. She could see the little wheels turning in Lynda's mind as she contemplated that idea, and, finally, she nodded.
"O-ok...thanks Laur."
Laurie helped Lynda onto her lap as she reclined the loveseat. Lynda laid on her chest like a baby and Laurie covered them both with a fluffy blue blanket. With Laurie's back pats, and the sound of her heartbeat, Lynda was out like a light in minutes.
And that's how they spent the night. Three friends, sick as dogs but together and helping each other, now asleep. Well, except for Laurie. She'd kept her promise to Lynda that she'd stay awake. For some reason, the feeling of Lynda asleep on her chest, and the thought of Annie, safe and sound in her bed comforted Laurie. She laid her head back against the couch and, with a contented sigh, she whispered, "I'd do anything for you two."
#sickfic#tw emeto#vomit mention#annie brackett#laurie strode#lynda van der klok#halloween 1978#stomach bug
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I thought it was normal practice that the venue gets a cut of the artist's merch income. It's not? https://twitter.com/seaninsound/status/1556701700978868224?s=21&t=_xuHLVcdredBOOVcWXcm9w
Hi sweetheart. That’s not what he’s saying. It is normal these days and many people think it’s wrong that they do it.
His article is long, but it’s very interesting (emphasis below is mine).
Above and beyond the setlists and soundchecks, touring is tough and requires a lot of focus on the pennies and the pounds. Whether we're talking about an eleven album deep doom-metal trio trying to make a living, or newbies who are simply trying to avoid making a loss, touring requires the construction of a web of planning, such as savvily pre-booking Premier Inns on their advance rate or deciding between four or seven hours sleep (knowing the difference is often several hundred pounds saved on cheaper flights).
Whether bands play to 500 people or 50,000, being able to predict the right number of medium-sized T-shirts to print so they don't sell out (or get saddled with hundreds of pounds of left over stock) is boring but more important than ever.
Like any small business, understanding a profit and loss spreadsheet is crucial to live music. If you can’t get cancellation insurance due to COVID and fuel prices are continuing to rocket, every single hoodie and hand to hand record sale counts more than ever. So, aside from knowing how to impress a crowd, being able to set reasonable prices for merchandise to generate maximum sales and a decent profit, is more integral to a successful tour than it has ever been.
[…]
At many grassroots venues there’s an independent owner, who is often also the promoter. When you move up to larger venues, it’s far more likely the venue is being hired by an outside promoter (sometimes from an affiliated subsidiary company, who also seem to take some of the mysterious ‘booking fee’) and every penny from the bouncers to laundering the towels, is on a spreadsheet of show costs. It’s at this level where venues tend to charge a commission to sell merch, which is perhaps understandable when there are ten different merch points dotted around The O2 arena.
It’s not just the platforms raking in vast sums: Lucian Grainge, the head of Universal Music Group (UMG) recently received a "stonking" £123 million bonus. Meanwhile, a recent Guardian investigation discovered that UMG receives a share of Academy Music Group’s (AMG) profits from the sales of merchandise. These sales at O2 Academy venues are outsourced to company trading as Concessions Management International Ltd., which is part of Universal’s Bravado merchandise division. The report found that AMG and UMG take a cut, even if the act whose merch is sold is not signed to UMG.
[…]
She explains the maths of the merch desk: “For example, on a £25 LP sale, our label take £13.20 (fair enough, they are trying to recoup their investment, we have a very artist friendly deal with a great label). The venue take £7.50, they have no responsibility for paying for stock, they are only open to profit, no risk. The band then earn £4.30. Almost half of what the venue takes but the band have all the costs to get to the show plus the years of work that goes into that LP.”
“As for tees. If we sell a tee for £15. We pay £6 to print it. The venue takes £4.50. And we take £4.50. Again the venue profit as much as we do but without any of the liability involved in the design, print or delivery costs.” It all adds up doesn’t it? Of course, if you’re a massive act the economies of scale outlined in this BBC piece mean tees get cheaper and artists can consider fair trade & eco-friendly options like vegan inks, re-milled materials, or take the risk of commissioning multiple designs without passing too much extra cost onto fans.
Read the full article here
Featured Artist Coalition (or FAC for short), whose members span from acts playing their first gigs to stadium stars, have long pursued the issue of venues taking a cut of merch, but in recent months this campaign has ratcheted up, causing many venues agreeing to give 100% of the merch money to artists. Over 350 venues have already signed up to the FAC’s directory
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i want to get into taz because it sounds really Coolio, but i wanted to know if there are specific seasons or anything that can be skipped (or perhaps a good summary of certain ones)?? I don't have a lot of time where i can actually listen and it'd take years for me to listen to every single episode
sort of but sort of not?
so (and there is a good chance you know this already but just in case): the podcast is made up of multiple different stories (also called arcs), which have no relationship to each other. the story that most people are referring to when they talk about the adventure zone is the first one, called the balance arc.
the balance arc is about 90ish episodes total BUT like a quarter of that is live shows or other bonus content, which are entirely skippable. basically, skip any episode whose title doesn't follow the standard format of "Ep. [number]: [chapter name] - [episode name]". also, episode 1.5 just is an edited down version of episode 1, so just listen to 1.5 and skip 1 entirely
this leaves you with 69 total episodes to get through. which is a lot more manageable than the ~300 episodes your podcast app was probably showing you. but considering each episode is about an hour long (and the last few are a bit longer than that bc they were REALLY determined to end with episode 69 bc funny sex number), that still might be a bit much for you.
now, none of these 69 official episodes can be Fully skipped without you being confused BUT there are some alternatives to listening to all of the episodes in podcast form if you don't think you'd be able to do that
the best option here is to read the graphic novels. right now, 5 out of the 8 total books have been published. idk when the last 3 are supposed to be published, but it'll probably be Quite A While, considering the 5th one was just published a couple weeks ago. but what you can do is read what books are available now, and then switch to listening to the podcast where the books leave off (which is at the end of the "the eleventh hour" chapter. which should leave just 20 podcast episodes to listen to)
(i myself have not actually read the graphic novel adaptations yet but i hear that they're pretty good. some minor plot points were changed or abridged in the graphic novel adaptations, but to my knowledge, none of this will seriously impede your ability to understand future chapters when you have to switch from novel to podcast. there were also some minor npc and town names that were changed for legal reasons in the novel adaptations, but i could probably find you a list of all those changes if you need, so you could know like "okay, when they mention phandalin in the podcast, they're talking about haverdale from the graphic novels")
but if the idea of reading the graphic novels doesn't appeal to you, the other option is to just read summaries of episodes on the wiki instead of listening to them. i suggest you just do this for the first chapter, "here there be gerblins". htbg is below the other chapters quality-wise and some character things end up getting retconned soon after anyway (because at this point the dm and players were still trying to figure out where they wanted to go with this series), so you won't miss too much quality content if you skip it. there is a summary of the whole arc on the wiki HERE, or you can read more in-depth summaries of each individual episode HERE (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) under the synopsis tab. this still leaves you with 63 episodes left to listen to, but it'll save you a few hours at least, and you'll get to skip over some of the "worse" episodes in the series
(some people have even recommended just reading episode summaries all the way up til the "petals to the metal" chapter but i STRONGLY disagree there. i actually really loved the "murder on the rockport limited" chapter, and thought the "moonlighting" mini-chapter/intermission wasn't too bad either
and like, if you go into the podcast with a sort of "i'm just gonna skip ahead til The Real Action happens" mindset instead of just enjoying the journey, you're not gonna have much fun listening to Any of the podcast, even AFTER it gets to the climax. because a lot of it is just going at its own pace and joking around. and while it does get increasingly story-oriented as time goes on, if you're looking for a point where it gets to be 100% balls-to-the-wall storytelling, you're never gonna find what you're looking for and are just gonna be frustrated)
#eliot posts#the adventure zone#taz#taz balance#tell me if you have any further questions bc sometimes i can be bad at explaining stuff lol#it's not as confusing as i probably make it sound lol#sidenote: i actually have the first 3 graphic novels coming in the mail as we speak!#i wanted to read them but my library didn't have them and i was too shy to ask abt interlibrary loan#so i ordered them off a used book site a few days ago#i am excited for when they come in#long post
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Hi! This is the person who asked for the orange juice gifs. (sorry you had to like speedrun the whole show because apparently they drink that much orange juice, I somehow never noticed until you pointed it out lol.) Anyways, I'm curious, do you know why they drink so much orange juice? Or is it just this unexplained phenomenon?
No worries! I had fun going through the episodes! I wish tumblr had done that update allowing for 30 gifs at a time earlier, though, because then I would've been able to just cram all the gifs into a single post rather than 3, lol.
I wish I knew why they leaned so heavily on the orange juice in that show, because it really is very noticeable. I've got a Family Ties book "Alex Gets the Business", which is like a "bonus" episode basically, and there are multiple mentions of oj in that too. It's like subliminal messaging. I have to wonder if orange juice sales went up among Family Ties fans during the show's original run.
Anyway, I do know one interesting fact regarding the oj thing! MJF has actually talked about how he used Alex's frequent consumption of juice to help him time his lines just right. Basically, he would sip it to occupy his time while someone else was delivering their lines, and then once they were done, the glass would go down and Alex would fire back a witty retort. Eventually, it became enough of a pattern that whenever the audience saw Alex drinking his oj, it would signal to them that he had a funny line coming up. And it totally worked. I mean, you see Alex reach for that glass, and you're just like, "Oh, he's gearing up to say something hilarious."
There's an interview where he mentions that he got the inspiration for this quirk from his older brother, who was the family comedian and would sit there silently drinking his milk at the dinner table and waiting for the opportunity to crack a joke or make a funny comment.
Thanks for the ask!
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Louis fans mass buy and mass stream that's why his numbers were better it's not because he's more popular. Niall's numbers are organic that's why they're low because the GP is not that interested. his fans don't care about streaming that much, even tho he really, really does. it's kind of itonic how Louis seems to not care about numbers but his fans work like machines to grant him success whilst Niall vocally cares but his fans don't give a fuck lmao. ////
Anon, you have to be honest here. Do you really think Niall's sales and numbers are organic?? That his fans don't care about his streams? Yes, Louies go hard for Louis with the streams and mass buy his albums to give him a better chart position. But have you actually seen Niall's UAs these last few days since he released the album??? They are having multiple daily streaming parties, buying parties, gifting, fundings, yelling at each other to stream his album and bribing each other with prizes etc. And unlike Harry's UAs who doesn't work together as a unit for Harry since they have all developed this ego that one is better than the other, Niall's UAs like Louis' team up and work together planning all the parties. For both Louis and Niall the GP is not interested. It shows in the numbers they are pulling. It is a given. Both are boring and annoying. Nothing about Niall Horan is organic anon. He is the bona fide male version of Taylor greedy Swift. Niall has done everything Taylor did except release a 3am Midnights version. Add to that I saw that his album is discounted in the US and UK and on his store. Bonus: don't forget all the signed CDs and vinyls he keep adding. So all the "sales" he gets is from these cheating tricks he pulled. The Billboard article itself proves my point. That many variants for a single album? Nah! The HDD prediction also shows that 90% of his sales came from those cheating tricks. Nothing about his numbers are organic. Without those tricks he'll be pulling 10k sales like Liam Payne did with LP1.
PS- Louis cares about his numbers too anon. Otherwise his pathetic ass wouldn't have bragged about the UK #1 he cheated to get.
I hate when Harries give Niall a pass. He is no better than the L twins. You should all clump him in the same basket. Not give him any flowers for cheating to stay relevant and have success. Thank you! 🤐
Still think Niall might have a deluxe version up his sleeve for when sales start flagging in the second week.
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